Bananas=Platanos?

I'm confused...
I thought bananas were bananas, sweet, yellow, maybe some spots, good to eat anytime.

Platanos, need to be cooked to be eaten. some are hard and you can fry those and put a variety of condiments, etc....some are soft and sweet and dark in color, but those too, need to be cooked before eating.

Is it a dialect thing?

Because we say bananas for bananas.
And platanos are in the banana family but are not eaten like bananas.

Hi Dragona!
Here in Cuba they are all plátanos but have a last name.
Now, what you call platanos for us is plátano macho ("male banana"). It needs to be boiled or fried or cooked in general, to be eaten.
Your bananas is our plátano de fruta ("fruit banana). You can eat them without cooking as long as they're ripe.
But in general we say plátano!!!!

I think it's just the other way round :
you eat the pl&#225;tanos
and the bananas you cook (or whatever, never tried it).

We in our language DUTCH also call the pl&#225;tanos "bananas"
and we have a similar "fence-sitter" :
Ananas = pi&#241;a = pineapple
(well...a bit beside the question, but perhaps interesting...)

Have a nice weekend !

GEE, Sandra T and Joel the detective seem to know it a whole lot better than me.Yet I eat a banana every day !In Belgium, we only eat the normal bananas, which are called pl&#225;tanos in Spanish.And it seems I was wrong regarding the ones you bake...

I've never heard the work banana used in Mexico except when my niece was showing off her English. Aparently it's regional. Banana in Europe and platino macho in North America and the Caribean. Any input from Central and South America?

South America replying

Originally Posted by El Detective

Faxcinating! (Sorry for the play on your name, I should know better).

I've never heard the work banana used in Mexico except when my niece was showing off her English. Aparently it's regional. Banana in Europe and platino macho in North America and the Caribean. Any input from Central and South America?

Joel

in Argentina we only have "bananas", the fruit kind, that you just peel and savor. or you can prepare a "licuado" (banana + sugar + crushed ice + milk, in a blender... great drink!)

I saw once a foreign cook (can't remember where she was from) preparing an "exotic dish" with the other kind (I've just learned they're called "plantains" in English), which she called "plátanos verdes" I think, and explained what some of you mentioned, that they're hard and don't taste well if eaten raw...

to add to the confusion , in Argentina we have a tree --nothing at all to do with any kind of fruit -- called "plátano". do you know it?

I saw once a foreign cook (can't remember where she was from) preparing an "exotic dish" with the other kind (I've just learned they're called "plantains" in English), which she called "pl&#225;tanos verdes" I think, http://www.boyds.org/images/platanos.jpg and explained what some of you mentioned, that they're hard and don't taste well if eaten raw...

Once again, you are correct Laura!
Plantains are pl&#225;tanos which are very popular in dishes in my territory. I especially like them fried or baked with miel. And I've eaten those things in Hoffmann's recipe (the panqueques o tortas) and to me they were not very appetizing...a sort of hard, bland bread cake.

Sandra: Do they grow bananas in Cuba?

Joel: Pl&#225;tanos are pl&#225;tanos in Central America, at least so in Costa Rica, and bananas are bananos.

Frank: Pineapples are also grown in Costa Rica and are called pi&#241;os. Have you ever eaten pineapple upsidedown cake? Fantastic!